Yea, yea, yea, but what about Phase 2?

Well, Phase 3 is profit. And Phase 1 was collect all the parts(read: underpants).

So far Phase 2 includes:

-Use an old jigsaw to cut out a test piece. And after less than an inch of cutting, understand that the old jigsaw just isn't going to cut it(pun intended)

-Borrow a relatively new jigsaw from work.

-Use the new jigsaw to cut out a test piece. (More or less accomplished)

-Get the bloodwood and cut it up into 4 separate pieces. (Totally accomplished)

And that's it so far. The next immediate step is to cut the pieces down to a rough cut level. Three of the four pieces you can see above have the profile view penciled onto them. I'll probably cut them to within a few millimeters of the penciled lines. At that point I think it will be time for gluing and clamping. After that point it's a mystery, but hopefully I will soon decide.

Hope to do the rough cuts tomorrow or the next day.

4/4 Violin Project Begun

The 4/4 refers to a full size violin. Violins are made in multiple sizes for children as their arms get longer. 3/4 is the next size down, then 1/2 and 1/4. I think I heard the sizes go as far as 1/16 or 1/32 but a 1/32 is not actually one-thirty-second the size it's just smaller.

So I've finally gathered up all of the important parts and pieces and tools that I should need to make my violin. (Except wood glue and strings but those aren't important yet) And here they are:

Top Left- The fitted bridge
Top Right- Tail piece and connector
Left- Chin rest
Bottom- Ebony fingerboard


These are the open gear tuners.


Here's a close up of the gorgeous bloodwood I'll be making this out of. (It's ridiculously heavy for a single piece of wood) Also this 7-foot-long, 4-inch-wide piece cost $27.38 and was only 2.115 boardfeet. I never want to make a table out of exotic hardwood, it'd cost a fortune.


And last are the rough sketches I made of the side view and top down view. I'll be making another set of these that are "finalized" to trace onto the bloodwood for the first roughcut.


I'm planning on cutting three pieces of the Side view and then laminating(wood glueing) them together. Then measuring things out and making the rough cut for the top down view. After that point it should all be planing, filing, drilling and sanding. Let's see how this goes.

Violin Project 3/4 Begun

Earlier this week the guitar tuners came in the mail. It's a set of six open tuners with 3 for each side of the headstock. The "open" refers to the fact that you can see the peg screw and the gear that it turns. Since violins only have 4 strings, I'll end up with 2 spares.

Now that all of the hardware I ordered has been delivered, I started sketching out the blueprints to get an understanding of dimensions. I made both a side view and top-down view. They're mostly finished except I haven't decided on what angle the headstock should be. The neck of the violin is 3degrees lower than the body; this sets the strings and fretboard in line with one another. Yet the angle of the headstock does not effect the functionality of playing so the angle can vary. Seemingly different manufacturers claim it effects the tone of the instrument and as a result the manufacturer selects an angle and makes it their standard. I might just decide to make it 5 degrees, very scientific.

While mentioning the headstock and drawings, companies patent the design of the instruments' headstocks. Though the shape of the headstock doesn't change the sound much at all, companies usually put their brand name on it and try to make a recognizable shape to associate to their brand. So I went ahead and sketched tons of different shapes to try to find my design but in the end simply rounded the top to make the woodworking as simple as possible.

Also since the dimensions have been drawn out, I can make an educated guess as to the amount of wood I need. And if it stays dry enough, I'll stop by the lumber yard after work today to pick some up. Another thing after work today is going out to dinner with Oz's parents which means I get a random assortment of tools!

Violin Project 1/2 Begun

So with the piezo pickup working out just fine, the electrical department is all taken care of. Also tonight Oz and I are getting dinner with her family for her dad's birthday but I'm the one getting presents in the form of hand-me-down tools. I'm hoping then that I'll have the majority of tools I need to get started. With everything lining up, I went ahead and purchased the parts and pieces I expect to need to make the electric violin:

1 Ebony Fingerboard - $10 For another 10 cents I got the 'Better Grade' AND interesting fact, ebony is poisonous.
1 Hardwood, Black Dyed, Violin Chinrest - $5.75
1 Violin Fitted Bridge 4/4 size - $2.50
1 Ebony Tailpiece 4/4 size - $4.25
1 Tailpiece Adjuster - $2.40
1 6pc. Set of Open Gear Guitar Tuners - $12.53

Total $37.43 +13.95 for shipping

I'll still need to get violin strings but I'll grab some tonight as we pass the music store. I also need the actual wood, which I'll check out the local lumber yard to see what they have and figure out what I'd need.

In other news D&D this past weekend went well. The players checked out 2 more dungeons, and figured out a puzzle through trial and error. Nobody fell into any of the lava traps. And they were ambushed. I may scan in another the dungeon map with the lava traps marked out. Oz is on a mission to make more gridded, laminated paper so I can have more space to work with. The dungeons have so far been very small, more like intricate chambers rather than sprawling dungeons.

Stories live in your blood and bones... and your internets.

"As you head to your favorite search engine and look for streaming websites of your top ten childhood cartoon shows, you're browsing the internet. On any of your searches, you're seeing the top 10% of the internet. That's referred to as the green zone and we secure it to keep you safe.

We accomplish that goal by clicking farther and linking deeper. We've been to the red zone, where there are far worse than pirates, identity thieves and viruses. It's the Unmoderating Host of bots and spammers, and these are not the kind that you grew up with. These are self-replicating plagues and auto-updating digital monsters. We get in the way of their encrypted packets as they attempt to spread and we Control, Alter and Delete.

We are The InterNauts, We're going IN."

I had some semblance of this idea for quite a while and last night it clicked in my head. A fantasy story about fighting monsters and brigands on the internet in a lawless place. Like the idea of sea monsters in the ocean back in the 1000-1300's mixed with the lawlessness of the wild west, all taking place on the internet.

And I have never heard it used before but I googled "Internauts" and it's already a slang word for people learning about the internet, and protocol and yaddayaddayadda. But maybe nobody's made a story about it yet. So that task can be up to me :)

The past few days I've also been working on the story line and settings for the next game of D&D happening this Saturday. Hopefully I'm further prepared for anything the players can think of doing.

Great Expectations, That's the one with Pip right?

So as some may know, I tend to have very big ideas but fall short on the follow through. Due to the vast resources of the internet that we all wade through, I occasionally come across items or projects that I figure "I can make that."

For about a year, one of my idealized projects was to make an electric violin. After months of procrastination interspersed with research, I've taken one step forward toward this goal. That first step was making this:


Simply put, this is an acoustic pickup for my guitar or any vibrating instrument. Specifically, it's a piezo element wired to a 1/4" TRS jack. The piezo element has crystals between two metal plates and when the plates vibrate causes the crystals to produce an electrical signal. The black wire from the piezo is soldered to the Sleeve(ground) connector and the red wire is soldered to the Tip connector. There weren't specific directions about wiring and as a result yesterday this did not work. After a bit more plodding through the internet I found I soldered the black wire to the Ring connector rather than the Sleeve(ground). NOW IT WORKS! I'll try to put some audio up at a later time.

Also during the construction phase I had to make a wire with 1/4" plugs to attach the pickup to an amp. So I grabbed scrap wires from around the office and ended up with this little 3 foot guy.



Now after this whole process, I know for sure that the "electric" part of my electric violin plan will work. My next step is to acquire any sort of wood working tools I can get my hands on, buy a few specific violin parts and get some nice hardwood. If anyone would like to donate planers, chisels or power tools Please let me know.